Military Crisis in Ukraine

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Meekail
296

Meekail 296

Death to me, is not that surreal. I'm not afraid of death. I can die right now and I would be happy cause' I know that I've done enough contributions to this world even though I'm just a one human being out of billions. Those 14 people who died in Ukraine, I feel bad for them. They didn't expect death, but the truth is, you need to expect death at every passing moment. The corrupt government of today doesn't see through that truth however. Meanwhile, I'm just sitting on my ass all day on this rocking chair wondering if I'm going to die today or not.

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sivispacem 18,741

sivispacem 18,741

Now you just seem to be being actively vague. I'm not talking post-WWII, I'm talking now. As in, perhaps the last 10 years or so; at the most since the end of the Cold War.

You made a general point, I asked you to be more specific, you continued to make a general point. I feel we're at an impasse here, with you failing to provide specific examples of violent oppression of demonstrators against governments in contemporary post-Cold-War Western societies perpetrated as active policy by political regimes. And as far as I'm concerned until such a point as this can be demonstrated I will stand by my assertion it is false equivalence.

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K^2 2,021

K^2 2,021

Anyway you get lost in details and you miss the big picture. A truce and agreement were in place and they were violently broken.

A truce between who and whom? And who broke it? Is advancing towards Rada an act of breaking truce, or starting to fire live ammunition at the advancing people? Again, I strongly suggest that you review the sequence of events and the footage from that day. As well as get much better familiarity with the major players and their motivations. Because what you're doing otherwise is argumentum ad ignorantiam, and the worst flavor thereof. (There. Now I used Latin too.)

but it doesn't change the fact that the radicals were leading the opposition and that they are a bunch of nazi-fascists who preferred to maintain the chaos and violence that suited their own agenda rather than discussing any kind of solution.

But then they saw the error of their ways, decided to love their neighbor, and stopped fighting the very next day. And the end of violence had nothing to do with impeachment of the president, liberation of the political prisoners, or any of the other changes that took place as a result.

After all, there are still Russians and Jews in the country, and a lot of them are still running the show, so the angry neo-Nazis could not have been possibly pacified.

Don't get me wrong. Right Sector are a bunch of angry Jew-hating neo-Nazis. But they served as a fist of the people in this revolution. Nothing more. They numbered a few hundred, and while better armed and much more willing to use brute force, they had absolutely zero control over the situation, and any time they attempted to advance on their own, they were quickly beaten back by the police force. Now, when it's a crowd of 10-20 thousand that you are dealing with, it's a different situation. And very few of these people were radically inclined.

And big surprise! The president had a mansion and he was corrupted!

I think you missed the point. You're getting way too distracted by shiny things. Let me put this down in the more systematic form.

Yanukovich and Pshonka, the ex-General Prosecutor, were buddies. They were using combination of administrative and judicial pressure to force people out of business and laundry the dirty money. Hence the mansions. But that's an aside. Corruption is bad for the people, but it's nothing new as you point out. The point is that General Prosecutor is the person who decides the fate of the people who get arrested for protest. As well as the person who pardons any police officers for excessive use of force. Do you see a conflict of interests here? I hope you do. When said General Prosecutor promises to pardon people who got arrested for demonstrations as part of the conditions of peace agreement, but then back-pedals on that, should the peace agreement still be honored? Or is it broken already?

Finally, you have to look at movements of the military and reinforcements of the interior forces right before it all came to a finale. This is where I have to admit an inference rather than solid fact, but I'm going to claim that president's administration only used the armistice as means of buying time to get military involved in Kyiv. There is a lot of indirect evidence to it, from the fact just a day before, Yanukovich removed commander of the armed forces without explanation. The commander he removed has publicly stated that he is against use of military in this situation. He was replaced with an admiral from Sevastopol. That's in Crimea, which is the most pro-Russian and pro-Government part of Ukraine, and where most of the riot police used in Kyiv came from. And, of course, there are the troop movements, the preparation of declaration of state of emergency, etc, etc.

So it was that much for your peace agreement. Agreed upon between parties that do not represent the people, with no intention of holding it on either side, and it's not even clear who started the fight.

These are some of the things that were actually going on in the country, and things you could have picked up on if you spent time on it. Of course, media mostly reported on small groups of Nazis banging sticks and showing off pistols. That's way more exciting than the actual news. But if you don't spend the time to learn all the details, I must again suggest that you don't get involved in an argument.

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Doc Rikowski
1,356

Doc Rikowski 1,356

The details are important to understand the facts. I never denied that. Just don't get lost in them.

It seems to me that we actually agree on the big picture so at this point I don't even know on what we disagree.

Me pointing out that a truce was broken didn't imply that it was a good truce and that it could have not being broken.

There are hidden forces at work behind and in front of the scenes in any chaos and in any so called "revolution".

That's the only thing I was defending together with my criticism towards Western political hypocrisy

and the usual media propaganda from both sides.

On the subject of Yanukovich I was just stating that the fact that he's corrupted is completely indifferent to me.

He's just another crooked politician. 99% of politicians are.

---

@ sivi: I'm not being vague. We are just talking about different things. In my opinion cold war never ended, USSR did. We are pretty much still in a cold war situation if you ask me. It just looks different. That's why I say "since" 1945 while you say in the past 10 years or so.

Limiting the scope to the past 10 years is limiting the discussion once again to details rather than trying to put it in a wider perspective.

I just don't see Ukrainian Government reactions in the past 3 months as an active repressive policy but rather as a desperately violent and driven by the events one. Then I said that I believe that in the exact same situation Western governments would do exactly the same.

This because in more than one occasion they've been cracking up protesting skulls for far less important reasons.

The policy adopted is very simple: you protest in a violent way I use Police to stop you using force/violence.

Is it a Police policy rather than a political one?

You tell me cause in my eyes the Police represents the State and the Government in the streets during a protest.

If you consider Police and Government as two separated entities then it is very easy to reduce every event to simple Police brutality, which is a very convenient way for politicians to escape criminal responsibility.

And just as you say that the Ukrainian government is accountable for Ukrainian Police actions, I say that all governments are accountable when a Policeman cracks the skull of a protesting citizen.

Then, if we want to discuss if any government/police has the right to defend from violent protesters with force and/or violence it is a whole different subject.

I was just underlining the hypocrisy of the political declarations heard about the Ukrainian crisis pretty much all across the Western world.

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Sunrise Driver
2,060

Sunrise Driver 2,060

@ StreetMix: do you actually ever question the news or if they say on CNN pigs are flying you actually believe it?

I do. Do you?

From what I've seen by myself in Kyiv, CNN is far more reliable source for news than Russia Today and similar to it.

Also, Gov't hired lowlife thugs, gave them weapons and ordered to shoot at militia and pedestrians to set up rebels on Maidan. Nice, huh? And then they filmed it and sent to media: "look what nazi rebels are doin!!! We must fight back!!"

He's just another crooked politician. 99% of politicians are.

No, he wasn't. He was a dictator who wanted to repeat Tiananmen #2. Army vs unarmed protesters who only wanted to be heard, not be shot.

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sivispacem 18,741

sivispacem 18,741

How can you the actions of the Ukrainian government be interpreted as anything other than a consciousness effort to kill large numbers of protesters? They deployed police marksmen on shoot-to-kill policies for use against largely unarmed civilians resulting in scores of casualties. I'm starting to sound like a broken record here but I can't think of a single comparable example elsewhere in the West.

Even if we take your assertion about similar occurrences in the West at face value- which is a huge leap, given that most of the "similar" occurrences didn't result in mass casualties caused by police intervention even in instances where protesters ended up killing each other (refer to London 2011, where I don't believe there was a single casualty recorded as being caused by police intervention, yet which you use as an example of apparent states sponsored police brutality). Funny that...

...even if we ignore those questionable statements and possible cases of false equivalence, you still make the fundamental error of claiming every Western nation would have acted the same way, which I'm sorry but is utterly laughable. You've got so caught up in your own rhetoric that you've ignored a fair portion of the the entire Western world in tarring everyone with your "hypocrites" brush.

Sweden has been one of the most vocal critics of the actions of the Ukrainian government. Are you really going to make the accusation that given similar political feelings they'd deploy armed snipers to shoot protesters? Of course not, because to do so would be utterly ridiculous. So, are you going to continue insisting that the Western world is all hypocritical?

Edited to add, mainstream media is biased, yes, as all media is, but that bias is usually clearer than blogs, social media or other external sources. Short of academia and the analyses of NGOs and think tanks it's about the most reliable and accountable source there is. You just need to be able to process it like you would any intelligence source.

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sivispacem 18,741

sivispacem 18,741

As much as I dislike Yanukovich (kinda indifferent), he's apparently on the Ukraine's Most Wanted list for killing peaceful civilians in the protests; I mean, PEACEFUL, f*cking seriously?

Well, quite aside from the fact that Yanukovich started using the state apparatus to abduct, torture and murder dissidents over a month ago and well before any organised violence began on the part of the protesters, they've voted to refer him to the International Criminal Court for trial on grounds of mass murder.

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Doc Rikowski
1,356

Doc Rikowski 1,356

Sivi, I'm just giving you examples of police brutality in Western countries.

Now you are the one that is making me sound like a broken record if you keep avoiding the point.

Nothing even similar to what happened in Ukraine happened in any of these Western countries cause there was no attempt at overthrowing with force an elected government nor the will of changing the strategical alignment of such country. If such objective was on the plate in any of the riots that I mentioned before then you'd be sure we'd even see tanks shooting at protesters.

Especially cause in Western countries Police beat up protesters to the point they need hospital care, as I already said, for far less important reasons.

Just look at what happened in Italy when Italy was at risk of being legally governed by communists in the 70s...

Most declarations have been hypocritical. I never said all of them were nor I made a list.

And who knows what Sweden would do if Lapland would go for independence.

Anyway Scandinavian countries are always an exception in Western world.

Nothing new in that even though I don't recall them protesting for the Police brutality in Genoa.

NGOs like the ones used by the West as a cover to destabilise countries that are under the influence of the enemy?

Think tanks like the PFNAC?

Thanks to free and independent information on the web we know a lot of stuff nowadays.

Certainly not thanks to mainstream media.

Edited February 25, 2014 by Doc Rikowski

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sivispacem 18,741

sivispacem 18,741

So the entirety of your assertion is really a hypothetical stab in the dark based on some apples to oranges comparisons and some vague insinuations of state-sponsored police brutality, none of which you've backed up with evidence, plus handily ignoring large swathes of the Western world because they're an exception to your rule, even though you failed to specify it when you made your original generalisations? Glad we got that all cleared up then.

There's no such thing as"free and independent" information. The same virtues that make activist blogs and places like Wikileaks, Pastebin and other dumping grounds for information valuable also undermines them. A know bias that can be recognised and analysed out of an independent assessment is generally a lot more useful than an unknown or unclear bias, or worse still deliberate obfuscation and limited releases of information.

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Doc Rikowski
1,356

Doc Rikowski 1,356

So the entirety of your assertion is really a hypothetical stab in the dark based on some apples to oranges comparisons and some vague insinuations of state-sponsored police brutality, none of which you've backed up with evidence, plus handily ignoring large swathes of the Western world because they're an exception to your rule, even though you failed to specify it when you made your original generalisations? Glad we got that all cleared up then.

There's no such thing as"free and independent" information. The same virtues that make activist blogs and places like Wikileaks, Pastebin and other dumping grounds for information valuable also undermines them. A know bias that can be recognised and analysed out of an independent assessment is generally a lot more useful than an unknown or unclear bias, or worse still deliberate obfuscation and limited releases of information.

Also, Lapland is in Finland, not Sweden.

My assertion it has always been hypothetical cause all opinions are. Especially the ones expressed in here by all of us who have no direct and unfiltered knowledge of what actually happened in Ukraine.

That is something I made very clear in my first posts in this topic.

State sponsored police brutality is not a vague insinuation. It's a fact, or are we deciding to ignore all the riots I mentioned in which police brutality was used and filmed?

Was Genoa just a bad dream? Was Giuliani not killed by the Police? Do I need to be even more specific and post graphic images of violence that can be watched all over the web?

Scandinavian countries are definitely different from most of the Western world hence they are an exception in my eyes. They are closer to socialism rather than capitalism.

What you apply to independent internet information can be applied to the mainstream one with the difference that the independent one, usually, is not backed nor financed by huge economical and political interests that can simply censor news at their own will with a phone call. Money rules in mainstream media. They're all servant.

Edited February 26, 2014 by Doc Rikowski

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sivispacem 18,741

sivispacem 18,741

My assertion it has always been hypothetical cause all opinions are. Especially the ones expressed in here by all of us who have no direct and unfiltered knowledge of what actually happened in Ukraine.

That is something I made very clear in my first posts in this topic.

Well, not really, when you started making allegations of hypocrisy which took you two pages to substantiate.

State sponsored police brutality is not a vague insinuation. It's a fact, or are we deciding to ignore all the riots I mentioned in which police brutality was used and filmed?

Was Genoa just a bad dream? Was Giuliani not killed by the Police? Do I need to be even more specific and post graphic images of violence that can be watched all over the web?

Exactly what good would graphic images do other than serve as an appeal to emotion? The only thing linking the acts of violence committed by security forces during the riots and protests you've named with a conscious political policy to repress protest through violence (the waters are much muddier when it comes to cases of riots but I digress) is that fact you allege that those policies existed. Something you're continuing to do despite the fact I've asked you several times to substantiate this.

Given your mis-characterisation of the 2011 London riots as involving police brutality, when in actuality there was absolutely none (as I've already mentioned, there was absolutely no violence instigated by police during the riots, not a single incidence of reported violence perpetrated by police officers and not a single injury amongst a rioter attributed to their actions) I find it difficult to the rest of your assertion at face value.

Scandinavian countries are definitely different from most of the Western world hence they are an exception in my eyes. They are closer to socialism rather than capitalism.

They're part of the Western world, no? Regardless of any difference, it was still an inaccurate generalisation.

Also, what about Germany? What about Belgium? Switzerland? Holland? Luxembourg? Austria? Estonia? Ireland? New Zealand? Canada? Western countries where I also find it very difficult to imagine violent mass suppression of protest orchestrated directly by government.

What you apply to independent internet information can be applied to the mainstream one with the difference that the independent one, usually, is not backed nor financed by huge economical and political interests that can simply censor news at their own will with a phone call. Money rules in mainstream media. They're all servant.

I don't really understand what you're trying to say here. You also seem to mistakenly imply that in my discussion of known biases refers only to mass media. It doesn't, it refers to the reporting of independent experts working for think thanks and NGOs, academia, the operations of private intelligence companies, and all manner of other sources that pride veracity and accuracy over all, particularly the latter whose entire reputation rides on making factually accurate assessments of situations.

You can't imagine those countries acting like Ukraine. I do. That's the only difference between us.

But since we are both speculating here, unless the same exact political, economical and factual situation repeats itself in one of those countries (which is an unlikely possibility imo), we'll never know.

My speculation and my accusations of hypocrisy are directed to the whole Western world cause even though I believe that some exceptions exist in the Western world when it's time to deal with protests, I still think that most countries if not all of them would act like the Ukrainian government did in the same exact political, economical and factual situation. Especially the ones that have a past of dealing with protests using Police brutality, hence the ones that are more hypocritical in my view, and including the ones that might never use Police brutality (like Sweden or Luxembourg) but that were certainly hypocritical for never condemning Police brutality in the past when it was implemented by friendly governments.

In the end it is just my opinion so it is not the bible. But it is valid just as yours.

Maybe I misunderstood you on the media subject. By mainstream media I mean the big news commercial networks.

I'm sure think tanks experts, specific NGOs and especially private intelligence companies do go after accuracy and veracity but they certainly don't do it to feed it to the general public. Or at least they only feed the information that they need to feed for their own private interests.

Edited February 26, 2014 by Doc Rikowski

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sivispacem 18,741

sivispacem 18,741

So by that logic, all actions committed by employees of state security apparatus must be directly attributable to the state. Now I don't know about you but I can see some fundamental flaws in that. What if, for instance, a police officer uses his position to extort money? Does that mean that the state is sponsoring his extortion?

"A common UK practice of police brutality"? Don't make me laugh. It had very little to do with police activity at all but was a response to the lawful shooting of an armed criminal (so the jury at the inquest determined) and underlying tensions created by poverty and lack of social mobility. Trying to imply it was some kind of rising up against police oppression borders on the absurd.

Your links aren't there. Interesting to see you referencing The Guardian as a source after you so aggressively malign mass media, though.

Both of us are speculating, yes, but your speculation seems to be derived from nothing more than your own personal emotional views on Western governments. Absence of evidence may not be evidence of absence, but the fact that political administrations in Europe have been deposed by mass protest without the authorities resorting to mass murder kind of undermines your argument a bit. As I mentioned before, the resignation of the Greek government in 2011 under very similar circumstances (about the most similar I can think of actually) didn't result in police brutality being employed in an attempt to maintain the political status quo. Therefore I would argue that your assertions that the same would happen anywhere in the West are, factually speaking, incorrect. Unless of course you want to re-categorise the West to exclude Greece like you tried to with Scandinavia?

I would argue they do feed those in the public who have the pre-existing knowledge and understanding to appreciate and utilise them as a source of information. The fact that the overwhelming majority of people are entirely disinterest in discussion of this nature in no way precluded informed technical sources from being useful in a wide-ranging discussion. That's a bit like claiming that advanced analysis and experimentation with particle physics is of limited value in understanding the world around us because most people don't understand it.

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Omnia sunt Communia
123

Omnia sunt Communia 123

Given your mis-characterisation of the 2011 London riots as involving police brutality, when in actuality there was absolutely none (as I've already mentioned, there was absolutely no violence instigated by police during the riots, not a single incidence of reported violence perpetrated by police officers and not a single injury amongst a rioter attributed to their actions) I find it difficult to the rest of your assertion at face value.

I'm sorry but that is a load of bollocks. Considering the fact that the protests were started because the Police shot an unarmed black man, and then sparked by Police assaulting a girl outside Tottenham Police Station are you really going to sit there with a plain face and say that there was no Police brutality involved in the 2011 riots? Do you honestly think that the people involved in the riots were going to go to the police afterwards, to make a formal complaint about Police brutality? Especially considering the harsh sentences everybody was getting for even being at the scene of the riots?

Police brutality exists outside of the court rooms. It happens every day and most of the time it goes unreported because those on the receiving end are either afraid or don't believe a system that has brutalised them will ever give them justice. To say that England is a magical world where we our Police never hurt anybody is a complete fallacy. Between 2010-2012 there was a recorded 47 deaths in Police custody.

And since people were discussing the use of live ammunition, have people forgot that the British literally have troops stationed in Northern Island for several decades? Have people forgotten Bloody Sunday?

"A common UK practice of police brutality"? Don't make me laugh. It had very little to do with police activity at all but was a response to the lawful shooting of an armed criminal (so the jury at the inquest determined) and underlying tensions created by poverty and lack of social mobility. Trying to imply it was some kind of rising up against police oppression borders on the absurd.

Actually, the jury voted 8-2 that Mark Duggan was unarmed when the Police shot him. So yes, they shot an unarmed man.

Edited February 26, 2014 by Omnia sunt Communia

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sivispacem 18,741

sivispacem 18,741

No, I'm going to sit here with a plain face and tell you that there was no government sanctioned policy of police brutality or aggression employed during the riots, and little if any empirical evidence to substantiate the claim that such violence took place before the riots began but after the protests started.

Bloody Sunday was a vile atrocity in which the British government were directly complicit, but that doesn't go any way to substantiating the argument that all Western governments are hypocrites for condemning mass murder perpetrated by the Ukrainian security forces.

You're paraphrasing the outcome of the inquest in a misleading way. The 8:2 majority verdict regarding the gun related specifically to whether it was in Duggan's hand at the moment he was shot. UK law dictates that a weapon does not have to be on someone's person in order for them to be regarded as armed.

The same inquest, voted by the same majority, that he was lawfully killed.

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Doc Rikowski
1,356

Doc Rikowski 1,356

Omina pretty much answered on the UK riots. You are just denying the evidence of the facts.

The study on Police brutality was undertaken not only by the Guardian but also by the London School of Economics (links do work btw).

Your sophism about extortion doesn't stick. I'm not talking about the action of single individuals but about fully organized and planned actions of Police forces under the orders of the highest levels of command and approved by their political counterpart (the ministry of interiors in the case of Genoa 2000).

Then if we wanna talk about how it is difficult to condemn a Policeman in a court we'd go off topic.

Justice system is flawed and corrupted in most Western countries and tends to protect the power rather than the citizen.

The resignation of the Greek government in 2011, just like the one of Berlusconi in 2011, was decided by a forced financial situation (more of a blackmail op tbh) and it had nothing to do with mass protests. It is a very naive assertion or a conscious act of misinformation (in your case imo) to state such absurdity especially considering that what happened in Italy was virtually a coup.

No mass protest will ever overthrow a government.

Even what just happened in Ukraine can't be categorized as a government overthrown by mass protest.

Mass protests are a weapon used by higher powers.

Masses are manipulated since Cesar times to achieve strategical and political objectives of certain elites and certain groups of power.

Not acknowledging this means being a political and historical illiterate which is not your case sivi, cause I know you are simply defending the side you support.

About media subject... Well, those they feed in the public are certainly not the ones that tell to the public what is happening from a TV screen. Being those news journalists or politicians.

As for Mark Duggan, well, I'll leave that discussion to you two but it is very similar to the death of Carlo Giuliani. It is similar cause as usual Policemen are not convicted, evidence is planted and overall such proceedings should be considered a shame for every civilized country.

Edited February 26, 2014 by Doc Rikowski

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K^2 2,021

K^2 2,021

But damn, if they didn't have the best footage. Actually, some of the best coverage has been leaked raw RT footage. Naturally, anything they released officially has been edited to fit the propaganda, but raw stuff gave you a good look at how things happened.

I don't know how it got leaked, but I'd like to think it was intentionally done by some journalists with a shred of integrity.

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sivispacem 18,741

sivispacem 18,741

Doc, thanks for fixing the links. However none of them make the claim that the riots were a product of police brutality, but a reaction to a perception that the police had overstepped their mandate in these communities. One, a perception does not constitute empirical evidence. There's a "perception" amongst certain communities in the US that 9/11 was orchestrated by the US and Israel in the hope of instigating a Jewish one-world government to enslave mankind, but that doesn't make it true. Secondly, disregarding this, police "overstepping their mandate" does not necessarily equate to the use of brutality.

There you go again, referring to justice in "most" western countries. Totally ignoring the fact that large swathes of the Western world top every single indices about perceptions of justice, freedom from corruption, press freedom et al. I put it to you that your comments on the subject are highly selective and entirely disingenuous, willfully ignoring the majority of the West for arbitrary and completely baffling reasons in order to continue insisting your sweeping generalisations are accurate, and then moving the goal posts every time someone points this out.

Claims of evidence tampering are nothing more than a last-ditch attempt to discredit rebuttals and in the case of Duggan are totally without basis. The allegations of planted evidence made during the inquest were dismissed by the jury, end of. Any statements to that effect are purely uninformed hearsay without basis in reality or empiricism, driven entirely by emotion and personal prejudice.

So, by your logic no government has ever been deposed by mass protrst purely because there are always external forces at work? Or are you applying that selectively to these events alone? Additionally, whilst there are certainly economic contributing factors in the cases of Greece and Italy, to claim the weight of popular opinion against the leaderships had absolutely no effect on their resignation is deeply suspect in my view. Tell me, as you enjoy hypothesising about the actions of Western governments so, do you think the Greek prime minister would have stood down if it weren't for the half million men and women on the streets of Athens?

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Doc Rikowski
1,356

Doc Rikowski 1,356

That perception comes from their own daily experience in the relationship with the Police.

Not everything in human existence needs an empirical evidence to be considered true.

We do not live in a court. If the people interviewed talked about police brutality it is because they experienced it first hand.

The 9/11 example you make is an example about a theory, not a perception nor anything experienced personally.

Certainly some Western countries do top indexes when compared to other 3rd world or east ones but many actually fall behind.

Just look at the Corruption Perception Index of 2013. It doesn't look good for some G8 countries.

And even when some do top indexes they do nothing or say nothing against corrupted countries that are allied to them or under their influence.

As an example I'll mention the shameful economical and political alliance that the West has with an absolute monarchy in which women can't even vote nor drive: Saudi Arabia.

Police do plant evidence. That's exactly what happened in Genoa (and funnily enough it was empirically demonstrated in court this one time) so I wouldn't be surprised that the same happened in Dugan's case. But since I'm not informed on the actual case I'm just speculating.

The weight of popular opinion has no influence on any struggle for power. Popular opinion, masses, protests are just tools in the hands of the ones that are actually in power or seeking power. Tools can be used and manipulated in many ways. There's no such thing as a spontaneous and organized mass protest. The maximum you can have it's a riot or a single day protest like a strike or a march. In all other cases, revolutions and similar, there's always a well organized plan behind. Planned by just a few.

The Greek PM stood down cause his time had come and a yes man was now needed for Greece.

But I think we are going off topic here...

EDIT: I may generalize when I write but I do it to introduce a certain subject or issue. Obviously all countries are individually different and you can't apply the same criteria to all of them. But to a certain degree all countries have flaws so I stand behind my generalizations about corruption, lack of justice and hypocrisy. Generalizations are true depending on the level of corruption, lack of justice and hypocrisy of each country. Not only Western ones but globally, of course.

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sivispacem 18,741

sivispacem 18,741

That's not really a skirmish that Russia wants to get into, IMO. A military incursion onto the soil of a sovereign nation who are not only arguably better trained, equipped and supported but also have the backing of most of Europe? Just remember how messy Georgia was for Russia a few years ago, despite their apparent military superiority.

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Max
1,654

Max 1,654

My father and I were debating a possible Russian intervention in Ukraine the other day, he envisages a Hungary 1956 situation to quell the unrest and believes Russia will invade to force a partition of East and Western Ukraine.

Personally I can't see this happening because, as sivis said the Georgian conflict was not plain sailing and whilst it did succeed in achieving most of Russia's aims i.e. the de facto establisment of independent Abkhazia and South Ossetia, that was not an easy process. If their intention is to repeat this on a much, much larger scale in Ukraine then Putin is crazier than I thought.